Radio, TV to be focus of Spain group

In early March Juan Luis Cebrian, CEO of the Prisa Group, Spain’s second biggest media company, reviewed full-year earnings and marked out more achievable strategic priorities for 2002.

Prisa has surfed Spain’s waves of recession with a pretty strait board: net profits for 2001 were just 17% down to 76.7 million euros ($67 million) off revenues up 8% to $1 billion.

Beyond growing Latin American radio ops, Prisa will focus this year on local TV, says Cebrian.

“There’s a general trend in broadcasting to attract advertisers by functioning on a local level rather than just dub U.S. programming,” says David Gladstone, a high-yield analyst at Morgan Stanley.

But Prisa thinks really local.

Grouped under Localia TV, its 63 stations in Spain target single cities, even small towns.

In Spain, such a micro approach is inevitable. Spain measures 620 miles from west coast to east. The Catalans around Barcelona and Basques in the north think of themselves as separate nations.

No country in Western Europe has experienced more political devolution over the last 25 years. Within living memory, most Spaniards worked on the land. Strong, sometimes arcane local sentiments still flare at village fiestas.

Since the ’80s Prisa has built its radio biz, led by Cadena Ser into a nationwide web of local operations.

“To capture advertising, local TV offers great synergies with radio. Prisa already has the know-how, the local contacts in place,” says Jose Saiz, a market research analyst at Morgan Stanley.

“Spain’s ad market is evolving toward cross-media sales. But local markets are still relatively unexploited,” argues Miguel Gil, Prisa head of staff.

Localia has created a market for productions at the Prisa-run pay TV operator Sogecable. It is also creating new distribution windows.